One visitor said he quit in a crypt under Stormwind Cathedral. That got me to thinking how and where would I say that final goodbye?

The first time I "quit" I just logged out wherever I was. I didn't really have plans on coming back but I did (big surprise!). This time, if I ever do permanently quit (That time has to come eventually right?) I thought of doing it how I saw in one priest video (he eventually came back to the game too and I guess he removed he video) of traveling from (at the time end game) Ahn'Qiraj, returning back to his starter area (Deathknell), remove all the shiny epics, cross his arms over his chest and log out.

Yet, although I am a night elf, I've never really spent much time in Teldrassil enough to want to end my days there. I've always been fond of the landscapes in the game. I'll probably choose one as a backdrop, sit there and watch it until it fades away.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

I felt guilty as I gave one reason I think the removal of attunements is a good thing - you no longer have to help others run their trials.

But isn't that what guilds are about? Isn't that what playing a multiplayer game means? Grouping with others? Them helping you out, you helping them out?

The pang of guilt came from knowing someone is saying "If you can't help your guild get all their trials done, you don't deserve to raid SSC/TK!"

Yes, but sometimes, many times - after you've done a thing - you simply do not want to do it again. And with a game like WoW its more like sometimes, after you've done a thing 50 times, you don't want to do it the 51st time.

But a friend of a friend of a friend just started playing and it would be great if you could run them through Deadmines or Scarlet Monastery or Sunken Temple. Or your raid leader wants to get his alt keyed for Molten Core, or more current day, you finally got your spouse re-subbed and you want to get them attuned for Karazhan. Or you are horde and need a paladin (or alliance and need a shaman) and you need to help them level from 0-70 fast.

I like to call this The Overhead of Social Gaming: a phrase coined in this post by a Everquest player (I posted his "Why I Play Everquest" back when I first started my own blog).

This overhead, explained as "difficulty of coordination, scheduling, training, skill, and group balance" is what led to the burnout I posted so frequently about in my blog's beginnings. Not really wanting to heal, but knowing my guild needed a healer. Not really wanted to raid on Wed, but Priest X had baseball on Wed. Not really having fun raiding, but knowing my guild was having trouble building the raid. Being tired of raiding, but knowing we were just *that* close to killing a boss.

I had a feeling it would become that way with trials. They take a while to do, even more so with a less than optimal set up. And you start noticing certain people always being asked, because they either have the gear, skill, seemingly free time (although just because someone is logged on doesn't mean they want to heal your instance).

So as Loral said, "that strength [of working with a team of other players] can also be a detriment."

Our guild wants to raid, now a small number of us will no longer have to feel like we are shirking responsibilities when we don't schedule a weekend to get more of our guild attuned.

We can still play together, but we won't have to feel strained to do so.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

"After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK.

Without a doubt this will be a welcomed change by many. The guild I'm in has been coming up short because people haven't been able to get attuned.

Its a relief for those of us who get asked over and over again to help to the point of burnout (healers and tanks know what I'm talking about).

My only reservation is, the type of player who doesn't do any work gearing up his character but instead wants the instance itself to gear him up. And the players who don't show up for wipes but show up for farmed content. The attunement kept this type of player out, but then again they existed before BC so it won't really be any different.

"We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to."

Now this will be interesting because the casual player has always said they want to do things for the challenge and lore. I wonder how many of those players will actually go back and do these trials now that they don't have to. I'm guessing not many.

"At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).

We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.

Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)"

Blizzard is trying to keep its playerbase happy. Its hard to do for what...over 9 million now? But they are trying.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Apparently the world's without-a-doubt top raiding guild downed Illidan today (the last boss in the Black Temple instance). It happened faster than I expected. But of course a guild flying through an entire instance within weeks of its release has got to be faster than anyone expected even if it was the cream of the crop.

Sincere grats to them, I just hope the speed at which this was done doesn't trickle down to casual guilds to start pushing at an abnormal rate. Because things had just started getting to the point where casual raiding may be possible and plausible again.

On the right side of my blog is a list of links to other blogs. Recently I've had someone (in the comments sections of my posts) request that I link to their blog. But actually I don't put links there at requests from others. I put links there because those are blogs I either like the content or look of. Links that I like to check out either daily or weekly.

The list changes now and again. Most recently I removed Adventures of Aeigelus because while I like the look of the blog and enjoyed keeping up with what Aeigelus had been up to, it hadn't been updated in several months. Some other blogs I check out on a regular basis haven't been updated in a while either - sometimes the gamers have just been really busy raiding or with Real Life and eventually come back.

After periodically checking on Inner Fire I finally moved it to my "priest" section, because the blogger has long since quit playing WoW, moved on to other things and no longer posts about it and doesn't appear as if she'll ever come back. Still a nice blog but the focus of the content has be redirected. The same goes for the popular Tobold's MMORPG Blog where Tobold has moved from playing WoW to LOTRO and based on some comments many of his readers are unhappy about. He still writes about MMORPGs and in his defense I don't think it was ever called Tobold's WoW Blog. But I also find myself only skimming over the stuff about LOTRO. Now I can see why anyone who doesn't play WoW would be bored with my blog!!!

My blog will go the way of the Dodo some day too. Because just as my blog is no longer about Life in Azeroth as it is Life in Outland, on day it will be my Life in Warhammer Online or some other game. And it would probably be simpler to just start a new blog than to have someone link to me and wonder why I'm not posting about WoW or why I'm not posting at all.

Casual players, a relative term, complained that they would never see the Black Temple (the place where Illidan resides).

But with the top guilds blowing through most of the Black Temple in a matter of weeks, is it possible that casual guilds may get a shot at seeing Illidan one day? Apparently some of these same guilds are almost finished with the Battle of Mt. Hyjal too.

Alot of it depends on how much players are willing to "prepare". Run various 5-mans to get the necessary rep. Use that rep to run heroics (consisting of trials that require a certain amount of skill and gear). Kill some bosses which is no small feat (last boss in 10-man Karazhan, last boss in 25-man Gruul's Lair), only boss in 25-man Magtheridon's Lair.) After enough people get that done, you need to kill the last boss in SSC and the Eye. AND THEN and only then can you get into the Battle and BT.

Sound like alot to do? Yeah it is. Can we get prepared? Blizzards seems to have made the instances easier, so maybe with enough time, we can.

Edit: I didn't take in to account the fact that many top guilds had been learning the BoMH and BT for maybe months now in unbuffed pre patch 2.1 gear. It makes sense that they are able to go rather fast through content they already know wearing better gear. So, it is probably a bad idea to use their success as a gauge.